GGibson

I need to find some slightly "weaker" hemostats, as many of the smaller blocks on my Santa Maria rigging were getting crushed by the hemostat I have, so I was just using the clips on my helping hand to hold the blocks while stropping.

I haven't used Model Shipways' kit-supplied blocks since... my first Norwegian Sailing Pram and then I learned better. I love Syren for their blocks, and have already forewarned Chuck that, whenever I get to my Constitution carronades and rigging (haha, seriously?!?), I'll be placing an order. Attaching hooks to the blocks should be an easy task, Peter. And there are plenty of posts here on MSW regarding stropping techniques.

Fascinating work, Captain Henry! I am anxious to see this all on display when I visit the Constitution this September! 👍

Thanks for the kind words, Mustafa! I have to admit I am happy to be done with this build and recognize that I did not post progress updates as regularly as I should have. This Pavel Nikitin version was not my favorite. If I had it all to do again and really wanted to do a Santa Maria ship, I probably should have done one of the more recognized and tested Mantua, Amati or Artensia Latina kits. But I also had two other ships waiting on the shelf to build, as well, and put this Pavel Nikitin kit ahead of them both, as I was intrigued by the unique design of Columbus' flagship. Ehhh, live and learn. So, yes, after a brief break, I will begin the Constitution, and I promise to post regular build updates to that log. I have a handful (or more) of Constitution modeler mentors that I have been reading and following who have provided amazing insights and nuances based on whatever version of the Constitution you each were doing. I must continue that process! Thanks again for your support and inspiration, Mustafa. Enjoy your summer break!

Thank you, Peter! Now I am really going to be following y'all's collective progress on your Constitutions! 🤷‍♂️😅

Wow, those carriages look sharp, Peter. Nice work! As to my completed Santa Maria, I had a much shorter leap to completion on it than you have on this beauty. Thanks for the look-in on mine. As I said in my post, give me a few weeks to clean up and reorganize my shipyard and spend some "grandkids time" away from the shipyard, and I'll be back in no time working on the Constitution's keel and bulkheads. 👍

Thank you, Chris! You beat me to the title change. That was on my to-do list for this afternoon. Appreciate your assistance, sir!

Well, it’s been several months since my last update, as I have been concentrating more on working on (and completing) this Santa Maria build than on posting status reports. With that said, here’s what I have accomplished… We left off back in March beginning to prep as much of the mast and yard spars as we can, placing ropes, blocks and eyebolts wherever we can prior to setting the masts in place. So, I began that work, as well as began preparing for the shrouds placement, which included the building and placement of the kit-provided heart blocks to be attached to the chain plates. The following are pictures of that build process. As I stated earlier, trying to get as much placed on the masts and yards as possible before each of the masts are secured on the ship. In order to have the cleats hold well on the masts (or wherever they are placed on the ship), the “well-known secret” (it isn’t much of a secret then, is it?) is to place a small piece of brass rod on the back of the cleat and a place to insert the rod in the mast (or wherever it’s going). So, we did that, as shown. One note, the brass rod pieces I inserted, as you can see, were longer than I really needed, so the rods on each cleat were ultimately cut down, accordingly, as they were placed. For the mast and rigging work on this ship, I decided to work from the foremast and bowsprit back. And, in order to attach the yard arms to the masts, I again used small brass rod pieces to help secure and hold the spars together. I also simulated a rope lashing on each of the spar connections, although realistically, these would not be lashed in order for the yards to be raised and lowered but would be connected by some type of pendant or parrel. Once the foremast was fitted and placed, I was also able to permanently place the windlass, the stove and the ladder going from the main deck to the forecastle deck. Next task was to set the bowsprit and its yard in place. One thing I found helpful to me in working on this Pavel Nikitin kit, because there were so many pre-made or pre-assigned pieces that, once they were removed from their sheets were either hard to identify of hard to keep track of, was to make up some type of on-the-fly placement mat as a placeholder until the item was placed on the ship. I even did that for the yard spars. In looking at the rigging plans and also reviewing another builder’s YouTube build log, I tried to determine how many eyebolts were going to be necessary on the bottom of the crow’s nest to complete the rigging. Ultimately, I ended up having more than I needed, but much better to do it now then to find out later You need to add another eyebolt after the crow’s nest is in place. The following pictures show the work done in securing the foremast shrouds. The following pictures show the main mast shrouds and… oh joy… tying the RATLINES!! As almost everyone does, I placed a lined sheet behind the shrouds to assist with the ratline spacing. I don’t recall now what spacing length I set up but it was equivalent to a ladder step spacing. I will also take the time here to relay an interesting email conversation that I had with Olha Batchvarov. As I noted earlier, I had previously prepared and installed a set of kit-supplied lower heart blocks on the channels. In preparing to tie the shrouds to the chain plates, I was unsure how to initiate the rope ties between the upper and lower heart blocks. I tried to research the issue here on MSW and other internet sites but was not finding anything. I have been following some of Olha Batchvarov’s YouTube videos and had some previous personal communications with her, so decided to reach out and ask her advice. She responded fairly quickly, stating that to her knowledge, heart blocks were never used for shrouds. In the Carrack’s era, triangular deadeyes were used instead. My options were, if I wanted to keep historical accuracy, remove and replace or… follow the author’s design and do whatever I want. Replacing the lower heart blocks in the channels and connected to the chain plates would have been a mess. And having heart blocks lower and triangular deadeyes upper would have looked a bit odd. So, I figured out a way to tie the blocks securely and moved on. I do appreciate Olha’s response, though! I also started doing some prep work on attaching the kit-provided flags to the flag masts which are then attached to the mast toppers. I threaded a row of 0.025” rope thru the flag edges so that they could be tied around the flag masts, as well as secured by a little CA glue. That all worked pretty well. I also ran a smaller set of shrouds (and ratlines!) from the upper mast top down to the crow’s nest, using another spacing guide slid behind the shrouds to help with the ratline spacing. So…..!!! It’s time to actually do some rigging! This task was probably my favorite part of my Bluenose build and I was definitely looking forward to the rigging on the Santa Maria! Bad news is, though, that for my build log purposes, I took hardly zero notes and no pictures during any of the rigging… until the end. There are no instructions in Pavel Nikitin’s manual pertaining to the rigging or the sails. All that is provided are two large sheets of plans. One of the sheets is primarily depicting what the standing rigging consists of, the other sheet shows the running rigging and placement of sails. Although a more experienced sailor or modeler may have been able to determine what 100% of the rigging plans were to end up looking like, I landed at about an 85-90% level from what I could determine on how lines were run, how they were terminated at cleats or around side supports, etc. Thanks to Vance McCarthy (VanMac on his YouTube build log) for answering a few rigging questions that I could not decipher from the plans. As I said earlier, although no step-by-step accounts for the rigging, you will be able to see much of the rigging work in my final pictures below. And, as I did on my Bluenose, as well, the Santa Maria will not have sails. I understand it’s rather difficult for Columbus to have “sailed the ocean blue in fourteen-hundred and ninety-two” without sails, but mine won’t have them for a few reasons, but biggest reason is I just like the look of these majestic ships with all of the rigging exposed and the ability to see more of the ship details without the sails. And mine would look crappy anyways. So, there’s that, too. The Pavel Nikitin kit included a separate kit for the boat that sits on the deck that they would have used to go ashore, etc. I decided to give it a go, as well, since there was the empty space on the main deck. Like the main Santa Maria kit, this boat was designed to be fit together practically like puzzle pieces. Well, except that it didn’t. The planks that were provided did not fit the length of the sides, inside frames did not fit as well as they were probably intended, and the seats did not fit perfectly. In fact, because of that, I didn’t put two of the seats in the boat. We made the best of it that we could and, all in all, the boat looked ok after it was completed and placed on the deck. I tried to stain the small boat hull the same darker color the Santa Maria had, but it came out a bit blotchy. I would like to at some point put some coiled rope hanks up on the belay pins and other rope terminations. But, at this time, I believe I am calling this Pavel Nikitin Santa Maria complete. Here are some final pictures. I tried using a background sheet to hide some of “other things” in my shipyard like shelving and a refrigerator, but… I didn’t do so well, sorry! I am going to take some time off before I pull the next ship kit from my shelf in order to give the shipyard a bit of good cleaning, restocking and reorganizing. We also have grandkids making their usual summer stay with us for a few weeks coming up. But around the first of July, I should be back with a new build log. Thank you to all of those fellow model ship builders who have at one time or another followed, commented and/or liked any of the content of this Santa Maria build log. You are truly appreciated. This Model Ship World forum is really something special and there is no doubt that I would not have now completed my FIFTH model ship without the support and wisdom provided through this website and its participants. I wish continued success to the NRG and its support of this website.

New deck and stanchions are looking great, Jim! Excited to have you in the local KC Square Riggers club! And, yes, a wealth of information is available from many of our "seasoned" fellas. 👍👍

I give your transom work a 6-star rating review! 👍🏆

Received my email today regarding availability, but when attempting to download, all it does is spin (and tried it on different PCs). Any issues? Thanks!

Well, there is a pea green hue, but not a.... 🤷‍♂️🤣

If you fill the gap on the stern side, the seat that is placed there should hide it well. Looking good, sir. 👍

Ken Foran's brass work was amazing to see in his Constitution build log. So much so, that I purchased his book, although I'll probably never be good enough to use half of the techniques he described! 🤷‍♂️🤣 Sounds like a lengthy to-do list, Peter! Will be fun to watch you continue your progress! 👍

Looks great! Nice work! 👍

Absolutely exquisite work, TBE! Appreciate your background historical explanation and interpretation.

Awesome work, Mustafa! Did you paint and stripe these last planks off-ship before gluing to the top head rails? I know your summer break is coming up quickly. Enjoy your vacation! 🏆👍

Your anchors and anchor rigging all looks really good, Unegawahya! Sharp construction! Ironically, Easy Dope used to be my nickname back in college in the 70's... 🤷‍♂️🤫🤣 (j/k!!)

Based on how Henry phrased his question, I am assuming he is referring to PDF files that are attached to posts. For testing purposes, I looked at the following post (found using "pdf" in the Search box), where EdT has numerous PDF files in his post. I am using Microsoft Edge, not Chrome, but I had no issues opening and/or downloading a handful of the files in that post.

Here's my "everything glue" picture. Previously, whenever I needed to use CA, I grabbed the Gorilla Super Glue with the Micro-precision nozzle. But, for the past few years, I have been using the Bob Smith Industries cyanoacrylate products, and have the extra thick, the gap filling medium and the super thin. To be honest, the super thin is really hard for me to control, so don't use it as much, but need to keep using it. They are great CA solutions, when needed. To apply, I grab a small wax paper square out of my stock (held with the clothes pin) and place a dab or so on the wax paper and use a thin toothpick. For my diluted glue supply, I have a bottle of PH Neutral PVA that I keep diluted in a small squeeze bottle with a needle applicator. That works really well, and I always have a Q-tip handy to soak up any excess (if needed) . In my current rigging of the Santa Maria, I have begun using the Sally Hansen Hard As Nails polish, which has come in super handy and convenient for the rigging knots. The built-in applicator brush makes it super easy to place a small drop on the rigging where needed, and it has a decent dry time to keep the job moving. And, of course, finally, the Titebond Original for all my wood gluing. I'm liking the Original better than the Premium. Anyways, back to Phil's original query, I am not familiar with the Locktite product but have seen it in the store. I had no issues with the Gorilla drying up, and have had no issues with the BSI products (although I do recap continuously when using.

I'm hoping that a few of you at least do the rigging on your Constitution! Although I still haven't decided what Constitution era or version I will do whenever I get to mine, it was an easy decision to not do sails, but to do as much of the standing and running rigging as I can on it.

Looks good, Peter! And also remember what has been mentioned on countless other build logs... You are noticing things, as the artist, using a zoomed-in camera. Back up 2-3 feet with the naked eye and it's never noticed. 🤷‍♂️👍 Over the side somewhere! With one hand hanging onto a rope and the other hand... well, nevermind.... 🫢🤣

Canopy frames look really sharp, Jon. Your perseverance paid off. Carry on, sir!

I really enjoyed working on Caldercraft's Ballahoo.

Nah... what's the old saying about skinning a cat? Yours are looking nice, Peter! Love how the grates are looking. Grate work, sir!